Posted on Aug 8, 2012

The power of polish in perfecting a leader

Practice makes perfect.

How often have you heard that statement? Maybe it was told to you when learning to play an instrument. You thought it was just your parent or teacher’s way to get you to practice more.

Or maybe it was in sales training when you role-played various sales scenarios. While it might have felt odd at first, soon you learned that you could really focus on the other person instead of what you were going to say.

No matter how much you might love or hate practicing, this truth remains. The more you practice at something, the better you get. If you want to perfect a specific skill, you must practice it over and over and over again.

This is also true for leaders.

A leader may be beloved by some and despised by others. But everyone admires a polished leader.

The Value of Polish

As a differentiating value, polish means a highly developed state of perfection; high degree of refinement.

While no one can achieve perfection – Jesus Christ was the only one who was perfect – we can all strive for it.

As imperfect humans, maybe the better term to consider is refinement. It’s the process of removing unwanted elements and making improvements through small changes.

It requires effort and work.

Consider how you polish a table and make it shine. Yes, you might use some good furniture polish, but the shine only happens with some solid “elbow grease.” You have to rub it. And through the process of rubbing, you are removing the dirt, dust, and grease.

The same is true when polishing a talent. The effort of practicing is the “elbow grease.” And the dirt being removed is the unwanted elements that stand in the way of allowing you to shine.

For great leaders, they apply incredible effort in refining themselves.

Leadership Refinement

What makes for a polished leader?

Are they a gifted speaker? Do they communicate their vision with great clarity? Are they so personable and charming that they draw people to them like magnets?

In his book Good to Great, author Jim Collins talks about Level 5 Leaders, those great – but rare – leaders such as Abraham Lincoln. Collins proposed that such polished leaders have a unique combination of Humility + Will.

The “Will” part comes from vision and determination. It’s what inspires someone to become a world famous pianist, a top sales person at their company, or to lead a nation forward.

Humility is what shines when great leaders apply the elbow grease on themselves to help them remove the unwanted elements of ego.

The single biggest barrier to becoming a great leader is ego.

Now let’s be clear here. This is NOT about polishing your ego. Too many so-called leaders invest time polishing their ego so it shines even more brightly. This may be why we have so few great leaders today.

As Collins highlights in his book, great leaders are modest and humble. When things go well, they give credit to others. And when things go wrong they blame themselves.

Perfecting humility is hard work.

But in great leaders, humility shines brightly because they practice it until perfect.